Friday Reads: The Library Book

Kelly Clever is listening to another audiobook, but this week it's non-fiction: Susan Orlean's The Library Book.

Kelly Clever is listening to The Library Book by Susan Orlean

This was my book club's pick for last month. My library hold came in the day after our meeting, but I decided to listen to it, anyway.

I'm sure that I must have learned about the 1986 Los Angeles Public Library fire when I was in graduate school, but if so, the knowledge was long ago buried under detritus about gray literature, Princeton files, and how to clear paper jams out of the public printers. The Library Book takes a thorough look at the day of the fire and the herculean salvage efforts that followed. It also delves into the life of the man who may or may not have deliberately started the inferno.

In addition to talking about the fire, Orlean meanders through the history of libraries and also takes a look at their present day. She's surprised to learn that modern libraries are de facto homeless shelters; that they offer lectures and classes; that a director is part social worker, part properties manager, and part scholar; and that a central library's shipping department packs and sends out an entire branch library's worth of books and other materials every single week.

My book club friends liked the book well enough, but none of them were riveted. Personally, I'm loving it. If you're a librarian or an aspiring one, or the particular kind of book lover who daydreams about Belle's library from Beauty and the Beast, you'll probably love it, too. The author reads the audiobook, and she speaks very slowly, so I'm listening to it at 1.5x speed. If you haven't already downloaded the Libby app from OverDrive, do that and enter your public library card number so you can explore the wealth of audiobooks and ebooks that are at your fingertips!